🖥 The VA Basement That Changed My Life

How I Went from Envelope-Stuffing to a Website for Veterans

When I got out of the Palo Alto Day Hospital in 1991, I wasn’t ready for the world—and the world sure as hell wasn’t ready for me. I’d spent about a year going to therapy five days a week, trying to keep the ground from collapsing underneath me. It helped, don’t get me wrong. But there’s a long stretch between not being actively suicidal and actually living.

So I was placed in the VA’s Compensated Work Therapy Program.

That’s a fancy name for a not-so-fancy reality.

They put me in the basement with a stack of envelopes to stuff. I stayed because I needed money to eat—I got a nickel for each one. I stayed because I needed a purpose—and because, for the first time in a long time, no one expected me to be okay.

Let me tell you, nothing grounds you quite like folding paper for hours under fluorescent lights, trying not to think about how this became your life. I was an E-6. I’d written award citations. Managed people. Won medals. And now?

I was making a nickel an envelope stuffing marketing ma…